Mario Vargas Llosa

In a remote Andean village, three men have disappeared. Peruvian Army corporal Lituma and his deputy Tomas have been dispatched to investigate, and to guard the town from the Shining Path guerrillas they assume are responsible. But the townspeople do not trust the officers, and they have their own ideas about what forces claimed the bodies of the missing men. This riveting novel is filled with unforgettable characters, among them disenfranchised Indians, eccentric local folk, and a couple performing strange cannibalistic sacrifices. To pass the time, and to cope with their homesickness, Tomas entertains Lituma nightly with the sensuous, surreal tale of his precarious love affair with a wayward prostitute. His stories are intermingled with the ongoing mystery of the missing men.

Death in the Andes is both a fascinating detective novel and an insightful political allegory. Mario Vargas Llosa offers a panoramic view of Peruvian society, from the recent social upheaval to the cultural influences in its past.

"Peru's best novelist--one of the world's best." John Updike, The New Yorker

"Well-knit social criticism as trenchant as any by Balzac or Flaubert . . . This is a novel that plumbs the heart of the Americas." The Washington Post Book World

"Remarkable . . . a fantastically picturesque landscape of Indians and llamas, snowy peaks, hunger, and violence." The Wall Street Journal

"Meticulously realistic descriptions of this high, unforgiving landscape and the haunted people who perch there . . . merge into a surreal portrait of a place both specific and universal." Time

"Unputdownable and unforgettable, Death in the Andes is his most forcible response yet to the country... whose horrors and splendours continue to haunt his imagination." Sunday Times

"Often comic, always surprising... Vargas Llosa mixes absurdity, brutality, fantsay and precise observation in a way that few writers can." Evening Standard

"He is a great storyteller, who combines high seriousness with lightness of touch, and this is without doubt another of his great stories." The Times

"A complex, gripping and disturbing book... a peculiar and fascinating story." Daily Telegraph